I had a co-worker recommend that I set the cursor to an hourglass (probably the progress cursor as described here) while an operation completes, in a C# dialog. The operation can take a few seconds to a few minutes and is cancelable. There is also a timer showing how much time has elapsed. This program only runs on Windows.

But I haven't seen a wait/busy/hourglass cursor in quite some time, in either a desktop application or a webpage (although operating systems definitely use them, both Windows and OSX). I've seen a couple fragments from google searches about busy cursors being hated by UI designers but not a lot.

I'm pretty sure it's not a good idea for my specific case, but is there a best practice regarding hourglass cursors?

I had a co-worker recommend that I set the cursor to an hourglass (probably the progress cursor as described here) while an operation completes, in a C# dialog. The operation can take a few seconds to a few minutes and is cancelable. There is also a timer showing how much time has elapsed. This program only runs on Windows.

But I haven't seen a wait/busy/hourglass cursor in quite some time, in either a desktop application or a webpage (although operating systems definitely use them, both Windows and OSX). I've seen a couple fragments from google searches about busy cursors being hated by UI designers but not a lot.

I'm pretty sure it's not a good idea for my specific case, but assuming that an application is otherwise responsive and well-behaved, is there a best practice regarding busy/hourglass cursors? Are they even helpful, or is it always better to have an explicit progress indicator in the form/page/window and omit the busy/hourglass cursor entirely so as not to confused the user?

I had a co-worker recommend that I set the cursor to an hourglass (probably the progress cursor as described here) while an operation completes, in a C# dialog. The operation can take a few seconds to a few minutes and is cancelable. There is also a timer showing how much time has elapsed. This program only runs on Windows.

But I haven't seen a wait/busy/hourglass cursor in quite some time, in either a desktop application or a webpage (although the OS definitely uses them). He said that Macs still have the beach ball (I assume this is from a fairly recent version of OSX). I've seen a couple fragments from google searches about busy cursors being hated by UI designers but not a lot.

I'm pretty sure it's not a good idea for my specific case, but is there a best practice regarding hourglass cursors?

I had a co-worker recommend that I set the cursor to an hourglass (probably the progress cursor as described here) while an operation completes, in a C# dialog. The operation can take a few seconds to a few minutes and is cancelable. There is also a timer showing how much time has elapsed. This program only runs on Windows.

But I haven't seen a wait/busy/hourglass cursor in quite some time, in either a desktop application or a webpage (although operating systems definitely use them, both Windows and OSX). I've seen a couple fragments from google searches about busy cursors being hated by UI designers but not a lot.

I'm pretty sure it's not a good idea for my specific case, but is there a best practice regarding hourglass cursors?